Rochester Top 100: Smart-building company sustains its growth

As energy efficiency and sustainability become as much a part of the building trades as bricks and mortar, services provided by companies such as Logical Control Solutions Inc. continue to grow.

The Victor, Ontario County, firm applies technology to buildings, CEO James Urbanczyk said.

“We take small, computer-based controllers and put them in every room in a school or every office in a building,” he said. “We’re basically smart-building guys, primarily based in temperature controls and energy management. But we do lighting controls. We can do access controls and stuff like that.”

Urbanczyk, 58, co-founded the company in 1995.

“Next year will be our 20th anniversary,” he said. “We started with two employees at a card table.”

The company employs 25 people, up from 22 at the end of 2012 and 20 in 2011.

The services LCS provides have not changed much since its beginnings, but employment and revenues have steadily increased.

“We’re doing most of what we did back then,” Urbanczyk said. “The technology has changed, and we’re doing more of it. The amount of stuff we’re putting in buildings is greater.

“If we used to put in 10 components, now we’re putting in 15. It’s more sophisticated. It’s applied differently. We’re working harder to save money for customers.”

“The growth has been in bite-size pieces,” Urbanczyk said. “It’s been stuff that we can pretty much manage, which has helped. There’s no rapid growth. Hopefully that will continue on a manageable scale.”

The company has worked hard to establish relationships with customers that are ongoing and mutually respectful, Urbanczyk said.

“In the past couple of years, some of those relationships have come to fruition,” he said.

“We’ve been very successful at helping our customers solve their problems. We’ve done so well at it, they’ve asked us to address other issues and other problems, in a semi-competitive environment.”

The company’s first office was in Bushnell’s Basin. Urbanczyk moved it to Henrietta in 2000, then bought and renovated its building on Phillips Road—near Route 96 and convenient to Route 490 and the Thruway—in 2010.

The firm’s service territory stretches east to Cornell University in Ithaca, and from Wayne and Ontario counties in the Rochester area west to Lake Erie and south to the Pennsylvania state line.

“A lot of our business is tied to aging buildings and the price of energy,” Urbanczyk said. “As buildings age and energy prices go up, it makes a bigger impact on our customers. Our business should be on the upswing as long as everything goes along those lines. I don’t see the price of energy coming down anytime soon.”

The building automation and controls market will reach $49.5 billion by 2018, growing by an annual rate of 11.2 percent, according to a recent report by research firm MarketsandMarkets.

LCS clients include the University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, Unity Health and Rochester General Hospital.

“The majority of our business comes from endowed institutions, followed closely by the health care business,” Urbanczyk said. “Both of those are pretty much in a growth mode right now.

“A lot of the existing infrastructure has aged to the point where customers are making big investments in improvements and in retrofits to bring them up to today’s energy standards and to use the latest technologies in heating, ventilating, air conditioning and lighting.”

The $7 million redevelopment of the 112-year-old former Josh Lofton Educational Center on West Main Street to mixed use is among the company’s private-sector efforts.

“The whole concept of energy conservation has changed over the years,” Urbanczyk said. “Now there are people trading carbon credits, and there are alternative fuel sources and the LEED and Green building concept. All those things have an impact on our business.

“What was once optional is now becoming more standard equipment in the construction of new buildings. And as people retrofit, there are more and more buildings being reused.”

The Rochester Top 100 program is presented by the Rochester Business Alliance Inc. and KPMG LLP. Launched in 1987, it recognizes the fastest-growing private companies in Greater Rochester. This year’s Rochester Top 100 event will be held Nov. 5. For more information, go to rochesterbusinessalliance.com.

Logical Control Solutions Inc.
Engineering, design, installation and service of computerized building automation systems.